This compromise bill. So as you mention the politics are fascinating. You have the president and Vice President calling rank and file democrats asking them to vote in favor of the package. You had nancy pelosi and Elizabeth Warren on the other side saying stand up and fight. Bottom line it got through. There were conservative defections because some of them wanted to vote to fight the immigration executive order. It now appears that that will happen in february when funding for Homeland Security is due to expire, sean. Mike, thank you. Joining us mow from the white house is foxs own ed henry. I guess weve got a new world order in washington tonight, ed. We do. And why would john boehner not wait for the new congressional majority and just do a shortterm cr . Well, thats a good question. And i think John Boehners going to be facing that come january. Everyones going to run out of town now if in fact this gets through the senate. Thats still a hurdle that has to be met. Youve got democrats like senator Elizabeth Warren saying she may hold all this up and do
this. Again, he keeps the government open. And that was a shortterm priority. But medium and longterm the president gets his health care and immigration priorities moving forward. Thats not what rank and file conservatives want. There are Republican Leaders tonight saying, look, what we did was set the stage for Big Battles Ahead Next year. Well see. Weve heard that before. Were going to repeal obamacare. Were going to do this and then Republican Leaders dont follow through. Well see whether their base is upset tonight or not, sean. Ed, the speaker would have had more leverage with the majority of congress coming in in january here. As you pointed out health care is funded, obamacares funded through october now of next year. Immigration will come up, what, some time in february. February. Theres no telling what theyre going to do there either. The question is if every republican ran on the idea of repealing health care and replacing it, thats off the table now pretty much for the rest of the year, right . Exactly. And, look, in fairness to john boehner, maybe he made the calculation tonight and well
see the reporting in the hours and days ahead that as youre suggesting, look, hell have a stronger majority in january and february and big deal hell have Mitch Mcconnell majority leader, harry reid will be out as leader. So maybe john boehner is calculating well win the battles ahead on immigration and health care. But you can bet the president is calculating every time he wins one of these battles and gets funding for his health care law, funding for Executive Action on immigration, the president lives another day to keep moving the ball forward and delaying stoppages. So john boehner may be calculating hell win down the road, the president is happy he didnt lose tonight. Joining me from capitol hill our texas congressman louie gohmert. I want to start with this alliance because as they voted on the rule earlier today, there
was a point they were down three votes. Then you had a shift of a couple people in the final moments. But you had the president , jou had john boehner, rather, needing joe biden, needing the president , needing steny hoyer, throughout the day at any point were you consulted, were you brought in to the discussions . Were you encouraged to vote for this . No. There was no encouragement to conservatives. The speaker and majority leader, these folks knew theres money for abortion, money for the epa to hurt states like texas, arizona. Theres just all kinds of money in there for things we dont support. And, sean, you and i know some of us have gone to our leadership and said, look, we can do this very easily. Lets do it together with conservatives. Thats the bulk of our conference. Dont make them take a wrong vote. Lets Fund Everything for two months. Let us have a vote on defunding obamas amnesty. And well even agree that the senate can take it out if they take the hard vote to do that and let it go from there to the president. We were willing to work with them to compromise. And not one word, as you know, the calls went to the white house when in a time that the speaker needed votes he turned to somebody that he really identifies with, the president and Liberal Democrats and got them to help him pass this vote. Congressman, let me bring you in. The whip said tonight, we have set the stage for battle with the president of the United States. Didnt they just give up a lot of leverage that they would have had with the new majority . Do you agree with that statement . Do you see any way now with the funding of obamacare through the fiscal year that theres any way it could be defunded at this
point . Not unless we put out a new Spending Bill. And i dont see that happening. Also back to the question you asked louie, i went to leadership told them there is a bicameral, house is send it to the senate and stop folding before we even show our hand. I said if we would send it to the senate and then let it then work there will, we may be surprised. There may be a lot of democrats feeling pain and heat from the election that theyll do the right thing. But you never know. You never know if you always punt the ball. Sometimes youve got to run, sometimes youve got to pass. But my frustration is i led the charge with the letter about a month and a half ago with 69 people saying we wanted to defund this. And we both voted against the
rule. We did not switch our vote at the last minute. We believe the right thing to do was let the members have a vote on this amendment. But they didnt want it coming to the floor because they knew it would pass. If you would have passed a shortterm resolution to fund the government, that you would have had the opportunity to maybe do some new bold and dynamic things. For example maybe deal with the issue of the Budget Deficit which wasnt addressed here, not fund obamacare. Theres a new poll out today, 58 of the American People want it repealed that you could have addressed that issue. And john boehner, the speaker, you know, work with the president , Vice President , harry reid to get this thing done. So one has to ask the question, did john boehner mean what he said when he talked about that they were going to Defund Obamacare, repeal and replace it . Why is john boehner cutting deals with the president . He said he was going to fight it Tooth And Nail. And fighting it Tooth And Nail would have been to put our amendment on the floor. In three weeks were going to all raise our right hand and swear to defend the constitution well, sean, what we did was only fund dhs for two months. So it appears the thing we want to take hostage is the department of Homeland Security. The Border Patrol. So the rule in taking hostages is never take a hostage the other side wants you to shoot. We go to the president , this is the way it plays out. This is the hand were left with. We go to the president in two months and say, okay, either you stop your amnesty altogether, or were not going to put Border Patrol on the border. Last question. Im running out of time. Do you think either one of you in any way, shape, matter or form that this impacts John Boehners running for reelection as speaker . Is this going to come up in play now . I think he ought to be able to pick up some democratic votes for speaker this time. For capitol hill chad per gragr. You are in charge of updating All Of Us On Comings and goings and you have been so detailed all day long. Inside but very important to all of us here at fox. Thank you for your great work. Thank you. You started early this morning by talking about the rule vote and how the republicans almost didnt get that passed and a lot of drama. Walk us through what happened. Well, in the house of representatives on almost every piece of legislation that comes to the floor you first have to approve whats called the rule. This is just a procedural matter here. If you dont have a rule which governs the debate, you cant get to the actual bill. You have to do that first. This was very high drama in the house of representatives. At one point the democrats were actually beating this back by about three or four votes. Then you had two members that came down into the well of the chamber, a republican who switched his vote from indiana,
200213, thats a tie by rule and then a freshman who lost his primary, republican from michigan, he switched his vote and they passed it 214212. That was really tough. And i talked to bentivolio later in the day and he said, look, there was this flash of Political Savvy that came about him and he was trying to be a little facetious, but he thought i thought maybe we could get a better deal if i voted to move this to advance that package there. So that was pretty high drama. Otherwise this would have been dead in the water, toast, and they couldnt have gotten to this vote just about an hour ago in the house. Interesting the speaker had to rely on the president and all the democrats. In this bill youve got amnesty being funded to the tune of 2. 5 billion, chad, when you break it all down in the varying departments. Marsha blackburn says it funds king obamas amnesty. And then health care funded through the fiscal year october 1, correct . Thats the interesting thing in this is all the fighting and all the Skirmish Over Obamacare over the last five years on capitol hill, no new funding for obamacare. No new funding. So there was not really a fight over obamacare in this bill. That was the interesting thing. Isnt that the leverage they gave up . That was the fight last fall. Yeah. Thats what some people think. And that was if you talked to conservatives like Michele Bachmann and steve king, they were very disappointed the night before last where this was not made an order their amendment to sort of shackle the department of Homeland Security, shackle the spending in some way the dhs would handle immigration services. And that amendment was not made an order. The problem of course then a Democratic Senate and harry reid probably wopt have thought too kindly of that and President Obama would have veto that had and that would have invited a Government Shutdown. So this was the fine line that the Republican Leadership and specifically House Speaker john boehner had to walk. To fight this next year on immigration. They certainly could have gone with a shortterm cr otherwise the democrats would have been responsible for shutting down the government. Chad, great job. Obviously you helped all of us here at fox. Joining us now fox news political analyst Juan Williams and from the Weekly StandardFox News Contributor steve hayes. Theres a reason in my mind, steve, that john boehner would need the president , the Vice President , harry reid and steny hoyer in all of this. And i think its pretty simple. I think the reason that obama would support him and biden and reid would support him is because they knew that the speaker would have more power and leverage if they did a cr into february. So the question is, why did john boehner do this . I understand why the president did, because i think this was a great deal for the president. Yeah. Theres no question, i was just talking to republican members of congress including conservatives who supported the deal. And they say in effect, look, that wouldnt have helped us much. We wouldnt have the kind of leverage that many people outside think we would have had. In any case what this shows is that democrats are divided or more divided than republicans. Weve seen this kind of infighting between republicans in the past. What we havent seen is this open defiance of President Obama from leaders of the left of the Democratic Party. I guess we could argue that the president s a lame duck and ed henry rightly so was making that argument all day, this would be a test of the president s power. The president did get enough votes to get what he wanted. He wanted this bill passed. And, Juan Williams, ive got to believe this probably makes you happy because this is the best case scenario, the president gets 2. 5 billion for illegal immigrants, he gets obamacare funded through october. You know, the whole different narrative going on here, sean, which is that you have the liberals up in arms over there because of the changes that are in this bill that allow, of
course, more money to be spent in terms of blind money coming to campaign finance, but most of all rolls back some of the dodd frank financial stuff. So theyre the ones that are angry at President Obama. And i hear from, you know, steve king and you saying, oh, were upset that boehner played along. Let me tell you, its the left here and the split with President Obama that i think is the big story. But the president hang on, but president still got the votes he needed to want. He did. He wanted this bill passed. I understand all the people youre referring to, i read the adjustments to the dodd frank provision, but in the end the president got what he wanted. And i think he was astute enough. And, steve, i go back to my point he was astute enough to understand this was going to be the better deal because with the new majority in january, boehner would have had more power. And they constitutionally have the power of the purse. And i suspect the president feared that come february,
right . Well, that is precisely the argument David Axelrod said on twitter. He basically said in 140 characters exactly what you just said. Oh, great. Im done. You just ruined me, steve. You just ruined my life. What are you doing . I was telling the truth, sean. I report. You decide. You report, i decide, im dead. Look at how Juan Williams is smiling. Hes giddy. I could go crazy but this is where we are in the politics of the moment. Its crazy. The Senate Just Voted to say were going to continue this for two more days so there wont be a shut down. And theyre going to have a fight because Elizabeth Warren and left wing politics so angry at wall street is going to be on full display in terms of saying
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confusion or abnormal behavior. The most common side effects are mild to moderate nausea and vomiting. Ask your doctor about tamiflu and attack the flu virus at its source. This a fox news alert. A Government Shutdown has been avoided. A short time ago the house passed a 1. 1 trillion Spending Bill that was reported by both Speaker Boehner, President Obama, harry reid and vice
president biden. And as you can imagine this measure did not sit well with a number of conservatives including me and including congressman jim bridenstein. He put out this tweet explaining why. I think it quotes it very well. He says, here are just the five of the main reasons i will be voting now on the omnibus bill that fully funds obamacare, over 1600 pages long, actually 1774, and spends 1. 1 trillion filled with political favors. Here with reaction minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and iowa congressman steve king. I know you tried to persuade the speaker and leadership all day to go for a shortterm cr. What is the possible explanation why they would not do something that was so smart that would have given them more leverage and power come the new year . Well, i think the reason why they did it is because the political establishment made a decision months ago this they
were going to get amnesty. And they were going to pay for amnesty. The Executive Amnesty is what they didnt like. President obama doing it alone. But they wanted amnesty. Lets not mince words. Both republican and democrats, the leadership, the establishment, wanted to have amnesty hold on. Are you saying, congresswoman, that this deal was struck, we think back in september when they decided remember when they decided to mo